In Michigan, the EPA has spent the last two years “writing the book” on what a tar sands cleanup looks like in an American river. While the disaster was unfolding, the CEO of Enbridge was on-hand, but did not bother to tell authorities that they should consider some alternative cleanup techniques to deal with the heavier-than-water bitumen slurping out of his busted pipe. As a result, the cleanup was largely focused on skimming oil off the surface initially. Later, officials realized that a wide swath of the river bottom was mucked with tar sands oil globules, as were sensitive wetlands along the waterway. The cleanup has focused on those areas since and recent press reports imply that even though most of the oil is gone, some of those submerged globules are continuing to spread.

The fact that Enbridge’s CEO did not offer up help in this area is not surprising. The National Transportation Safety Board reports detailing the disaster are riveting to read; offering a shocking and damning account of incompetence and a bullying work atmosphere in the Alberta control room that was supposed to prevent this sort of spill. But his unwillingness to even admit that tar sands were involved in the unfortunate incident, even when asked directly by multiple reporters, continues to shock me.

Enbridge was warned of hundreds of anomalies in their Line 6B. For years, they did nothing about them until one of those anomalies burst, spilling that million gallons of tar sands into the Kalamazoo River. Now, the company plans to replace the entire pipeline. No, not to eliminate the anomalies, but to double its capacity. This comes even as their Michigan disaster is informing a debate about whether raw tar sands oil, which is more acidic and chock full of corrosion-inducing sulfur than typical petroleums, can even be moved safely in pipelines. The National Academy of Sciences is holding hearings on the issue this week and a report is due next year. But of course, Enbridge isn’t waiting for that. Which leaves me wondering if they just do not understand the dangers of the stuff they are forcing at high pressure and elevated temperatures through their pipelines, or if they just don’t care. Take this astounding op-ed from an Enbridge VP that ran in a Michigan paper. It is so full of mistruths and mischaracterizations that I am left scratching my head unable to decide whether the errors are intentional or not. But whatever the case, folks along the pathways of Keystone XL and all the rest of those tar sands projects should pay heed. The Kalamazoo River spill undercuts all the safety claims about speedy response (it took them more than 17 hours to shut the pipeline down) and leak detection (the spill was identified by a staffer from a natural gas utility in Michigan). And it makes clear that this stuff isn’t your daddy’s oil. It is heavy, stubborn and tough to clean. We already know it is the worst carbon polluting petroleum on the planet. In this steamy summer, we should already be concerned about its expanding usage and the impact on our climate. But we still don’t even know if it can be safely moved in the US. With so many of these projects moving past and through sensitive water resources, it only takes one glance at the Kalamazoo to know that we shouldn’t be moving more of this stuff until we can figure that out.